The Shane van Gisbergen/Alex Premat Commodore received a mechanical back flag because the French co-driver went out without his helmet done up.

“He had his helmet undone, we weren’t quite sure if he was going to make it out on time,” explained Red Bull team manager Mark Dutton.

“It was a bit of a brain fade but obviously one you want to do in warm up not the race. We’ll get our driver change helper to do a sanity check. We’ve seen drivers do it before … it’s a heat of the moment thing.

“It’s a funny one we haven’t seen one like that before, we’re looking at the footage … good on them [Supercars] for doing the right thing, if he hadn’t realised, if it’s a race situation, even in practice you don’t want it to go wrong.”

The Garth Tander/Warren Luff Holden racing Team Commodore was second fastest in the session 0.0992 sec behind the #88, with the front row qualifying Scott McLaughlin/David Wall Wilson Security GRM Volvo third fastest.

The Will Davison/Jonathon Webb Tekno Commodore was fourth fastest, a dramatic improvement from qualifying.

Promisingly, defending race winners Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards have shown strong form in the TeamVortex, posting fifth fastest time after qualifying only 21st.

Andre Heimgartner/Aaren Russell were sixth fastest in the LDM Commodore, while the Mark Winterbottom/Dean Canto The Bottle-O Falcon was eighth, the Fabian Coulthard/Luke Youlden Shell V-Power Falcon was ninth and the Lee Holdsworth/Karl Reindler Preston Hire Holden rounded out the top 10.